Clause 19 - Closure of certain licensed premises due todisorder or disturbance
Criminal Justice and Police Bill
5:30 pm
Mr Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire, Conservative)
The Government amendment seems to be a sensible clarification in relation to offences committed during the period of the order or an extension to it. I do not need to spend long on that.
Amendment No. 85 is intended to provide clarification. The Brewers and Licensed Retailers Association wanted it to be made clear that the closure order would have to be in force at the time that the breach occurred. Will the Minister assure the Committee that the current wording means that the closure order is in force, and not that it would not be acceptable if another situation arose?
Amendment No. 86 raises a more substantial issue. Proposed new section 179A(6) states:
``A person who, without reasonable excuse, permits relevant licensed premises to be open in contravention of a closure order shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable to a fine not exceeding £20,000''.
The amendment would reduce that to £6,000 for a first offence. If orders are to be made without the legal requirement for warning to have been given, should the maximum fine be as high as the provision suggests?
If the Government had listened during previous debates, and the Bill contained the sort of protections that we wanted, that would be a different matter. If closure orders can be made when no warning has been given, one can imagine situations in which such a high maximum fine would not be appropriate. I do not need to remind the Committee of the costs that could be imposed on the industry as a result of orders that were made without any failing on the part of the landlord or the staff of the premises. The costs to industry overall are given as £1.1 million to £60 million, which shows that the Government do not have confidence about what the true figure would be. As for innocent closures, the costs nationwide are estimated at £16,500 to £900,000. The Government are about to issue guidance to the police on the issue and should be able carefully to set the parameters of the law. It sums up their half-baked approach that they are not able even to give a decent estimate—a ballpark figure—of the costs that could be imposed on industry. Given that innocent traders could be disadvantaged by the measures, the maximum for a first offence should be lower, to reflect the fact that the person concerned may have received no warning.